Device Port Testing

ATTO Disk Benchmark

To validate that the device's integrated ports were functioning correctly, we connected an OCZ Vertex 3 90GB SATA III SSD to the system and ran the ATTO Disk Benchmark against the drive. ATTO was configured to test against transfer sizes from 0.5 to 8192 KB with Total Length set to 512 MB. The SSD selected for testing has a maximum read throughput of 550 MB/s and a write throughput of 500 MB/s on a SATA III port and a maximum read throughput of 280 MB/s and a write throughput of 260 MB/s on a SATA II port.

External device testing was done against the eSATA and USB 3.0 device ports with the motherboard drivers configured for both normal and UASP operation mode for the USB 3.0 port testing. All tests were run 3 times with the highest repeatable read and write scores recorded in MB/s values.

According to various other testing sites, the real-world performance maximum of USB 3.0 peaks at 250-325MB/s on a SATA III-based adapter.

As you can see from the device performance, UASP mode makes a huge performance difference when enabled. On the ASMedia controlled USB 3.0 ports, enabling UASP mode resulted in a performance gain of over 100 MB/s during both read and write transfers. The gains on the Intel Z77 controlled ports were even better with read performance increased by an average of 150 MB/s and write performance by almost 120 MB/s. The performance of the device on the Intel controlled USB 3.0 ports begins to approach the SATA III maximum device speeds, an impressive feat for sure.

In normal mode, the device performed better than expected on the USB 3.0 ports with performance matching SATA II speeds on the ASMedia USB 3.0 ports and exceeding them on the Intel ports. The device performed as expected over eSATA with its speeds limited to SATA II device speeds by the motherboard's eSATA port implementation.

I would buy this in a heartbeat if it came with a gigabit ethernet port, and the software to allow me to connect it to my USB 2.0 laptop's gigabit ethernet port, amd back up my hard drive! One gigabit ethernet is around 2.1 times the bandwidth of usb 2.0 (480 megabits per sec). M$ requires the pro version of windows 7, just to be able to back up to a network location! It is a royal pain in the A$$ ad-hocking over a cat5 cable my usb 2.0 laptops with the one laptop I own that has USB 3.0, via its gigabit ethernet port, but this makes my backups faster! There are millions of older laptops out there with gigabit ethernet cards, but only have usb 2.0 ports, and a drive that could do backups over the eathernet, without having to pay the M$ OS pro-version TAX, would sale like hot cakes, and be a little faster than usb 2.0!

I love my D-Lock eSATAp (eSATA+power)enclosure. My work laptop (Dell Precision M4500)doesn't have USB 3, but it does have eSATAp. However, most of our computers at home just have USB 3, so this enclosure would be great for me.

On the Oyen Digital website is an alternative eSATA cable that is a single eSATAp connector at one end and two connectors at the other: eSATA and DC power. I really wish this cable was included with the enclosure. It's $15 on Amazon (but not available in Canada!). BTW the enclosure is $40 on Amazon.com, but $69 on Amazon.ca. Crazy difference.

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